1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to visualization systems and methods and more particularly to systems and methods for enabling visualization of data sets containing large numbers of objects.
2. Description of the Related Art
U.S. Pat. No. 5,966,139, granted to Anupam et al. and assigned to Lucent Technologies Inc., relates to scalable data segmentation and visualization. In particular, the '139 patent describes visualization of relatively large amounts of data in a limited display space, including segmentation of data, mapping of segments to a node within a display space based upon a specified nodal layout, texture mapping each graphical display to its node, and displaying the data at each node. The visualization scheme enables a user to map a relation to a specification of an n-dimensional display, by designating how attributes are to be used.
However, the visualization system of the '139 patent fail to represent data sets having two properties, namely that subsets of items in a data set relate to each other, and the relationships between items have an affinity value associated with each other. Furthermore, a system according to the '139 patent does not simplify the display of data to the user by presenting multiple screens of only the amount of data that can be comfortably fit on a screen.